IN SHORT

IN SHORT; NONFICTION

By ALEX S. JONES

Published: September 20, 1987

KATHARINE THE GREAT: Katharine Graham and The Washington Post. By Deborah Davis. (National Press, 7508 Wisconsin Avenue, Bethesda, Md. 20814, $17.95.) Shortly after ''Katharine the Great'' was first published in 1979, its publisher, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, withdrew it and shredded thousands of copies after reviewing complaints regarding the book's accuracy from Katharine Graham, chairman of the Washington Post Company, and Benjamin C. Bradlee, executive editor of the newspaper. The book's author, Deborah Davis, filed suit against Harcourt Brace for breach of contract and received a $100,000 settlement in 1983. The new ''Katharine the Great,'' which is essentially the same as the original, is an unauthorized account of Mrs. Graham's life, including her marriage to the brilliant and mentally troubled Philip Graham, who committed suicide in 1963. At his death, Mrs. Graham took charge of The Washington Post, which had been acquired by her father in 1933, and the book tells of her transformation from a bright housewife into what Ms. Davis portrays as a powerful, sometimes ruthless, press mogul. The book offers detail, but it is weakened by an absence of footnotes, though some general sources are mentioned in an appendix. Ms. Davis takes a shot at identifying ''Deep Throat,'' the primary source of The Post's Watergate coverage. She says it was Richard Ober, a Harvard classmate of Mr. Bradlee and a former C.I.A. operative. One of Ms. Davis's central themes is that for many years the C.I.A. has manipulated The Washington Post, as well as other news organizations. For instance, she says that the Watergate scandal was essentially created by the C.I.A. to discredit President Nixon, who was, in turn, trying to discredit the agency. New to this edition is an appendix charging that Mr. Bradlee was part of what Ms. Davis characterizes as a C.I.A.-sponsored propaganda effort in the early 50's to bolster support for the espionage convictions of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Mr. Bradlee was press attache at the United States Embassy in Paris at the time, and - in a letter to Ms. Davis included in the appendix - says that as ''the embassy's expert on the case'' he prepared ''a 30,000 word witness-by-witness account of the crime.'' In the same letter, he also says that all Ms. Davis's allegations about his association with the C.I.A. are false.